WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 16: (L-R) Hotel employee Tedros Birat opens the Uber Car door for Brendan Kownacki who uses the UBER car via a smartphone app to get around town rather than cabs in Washington, DC on July 16, 2012. He pays a little more than cabs but says it's worth it. It's automatically billed to his credit card, tip included, and the quality of the cars and drivers leaves no surprises for him or his clients. (Photo by Linda Davidson / The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Photo: The Washington Post, The Washington Post/Getty Images

WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 16: (L-R) Hotel employee Tedros Birat opens...

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CEO Travis Kalanick says surge pricing encourages Uber drivers to work when demand is high. Lyft and Sidecar are also toying with dynamic pricing.

On New Year's Eve, bars around the country charged exorbitant covers, sometimes over $100, just to get in the door. Days before, the rates for hotel rooms and airline tickets soared leading up to Christmas. And at stores nationwide, savvy shoppers pounced as retail prices seesawed on Dec. 26.

Price fluctuations are a constant in most industries, from happy hour beers to free night and weekend minutes on cell phones.

But the reaction to app-based car service Uber's fast-changing rates is something new altogether.

At first the hoopla - which is separate from the sometimes violent reaction the company draws from its bid to disrupt the traditional taxi industry - seemed like the Silicon Valley media dredging up an argument. But with an article in this past weekend's New York Times Magazine asking "Is Uber's Surge-Pricing an Example of High-Tech Gouging?" the debate over Uber's rates hit the national level.

So why has Uber been singled out for doing what just about every other business does: adjust price based on demand?

A lot of it is its own doing. Unlike most businesses, which prefer talking about the times when their prices are lowest, Uber revels in the opposite. The company loves hyping its "surge pricing" - an aggressive way to describe what is simply pricing by demand.

And we don't see airline CEOs crow "Get some popcorn," as Uber CEO Travis Kalanick did, before calling out a customer who questioned a price increase.

Free-market fan

Plenty of execs would love to tell complaining customers to pay up or move on, but most avoid rubbing higher prices in people's faces. Kalanick, who used to have the cover of Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" as his Twitter avatar, does it with glee while proudly waving the free-market banner.

Some of that "perfect market conditions" talk resonates positively with customers - especially business folk who want to zoom around the city in black cars. There's a certain section of the business community that quietly respects Uber pulling off such dynamic pricing.

But only time will tell if this strategy is savvy. No one likes higher rates, and no one wants to hear a car service tell them "Take a hike if you don't like it."

Perhaps the most unsettling part of the policy is simply the speed at which prices can change. Airline ticket prices and happy hours are price changes that follow schedules consumers understand. But something in the Uber algorithm may decide your ride needs to be 50 percent more expensive, all of a sudden.

Whether or not we're creating perfect market conditions, that just doesn't feel right when you're waiting for a ride. And no doubt there are horror stories of expensive fares that feel more like extortion.

Plus, as the Times points out, we're used to flat rates for cabs. The whole reason there are meters is to prevent price gouging. It would be chaotic, the thinking goes, if we had to negotiate the price of every ride. (Though, order a cab or tuk-tuk in other parts of the world and you'll notice such a system works fairly well, if you've got your wits about you.)

There's no negotiating with Uber and competitors Lyft and Sidecar, but thanks to their ease of use, it's not hard to imagine them completely replacing the old taxi model.

Getting quotes

To their credit, many car service apps allow customers to get quotes before agreeing to take a ride. This past weekend, I checked how much it would cost to get me across the Mission District: $15.

But when I checked with Sidecar and Lyft, which are also toying with demand-based-pricing, the price was only $8. A no-brainer: No thanks, Uber.

Some of the reaction is tied to a debatable notion Kalanick loves to push: Surge pricing gets drivers on the road during times of peak demand - meaning everyone wins. These drivers don't have schedules - they work when it's lucrative, so bumping rates on a busy evening will make it more worth their while, the logic goes, and broaden Uber's services.

But the flipside to that theory is that higher prices will decrease the number of prospective customers - thus decreasing the aggregate number of rides for drivers, and making driving less lucrative.

Lucrative operation

No matter the reason the crosshairs are on Uber, the company shows no signs of slowing growth. Google Ventures didn't sink $258 million into it for nothing, and leaked numbers show it can haul $20 million a day in revenue. As Kalanick himself is infamous for saying, if we don't like the policy, find another ride.